Writing.com

I've taken the next step in my writing. I've joined a writing website where I can post all my stories and get ratings and reviews from other members. It's a great site and there are a lot of tips and tricks to help with my writing. I enter contests on it all the time and even though they do not pay out in money, they pay out in gift points which can be used around the site. I've won a couple and I continue to use the contest prompts to explore my writing further and help me along. And I love it.

In other news, I've been writing a new story and so far it's pretty long and I'm not nearly done. It's a love story (as most of my stories are) with a little twist (as most of my stories do) It involves three characters: Veronica, Ethan and Emmy and is told from each of their perspectives. Each chapter is titled with their name so that you know whose voice you're hearing. Ethan and Emmy have a past and dated for quite a while until Ethan broke it off. Six months later and she has flown into his life again and he can't get her out of his head and maybe he doesn't want to. But he has recently met another girl, Veronica, and has just as much, if not more, chemistry with her. For a while he is involved with both of them but then he makes the choice and chooses Veronica. Unfortunately Emmy is not going away any time soon and she is not happy with Ethan's new found love. But how far will she go to get Ethan back?

Veronica is a dreamer who wants nothing more than to find her happy ending and overcome the fear of being hurt. She watched her parents' marriage fall apart before her eyes and she plays by certain rules to make sure that won't happen to her. Ethan is a musician torn between his past and his future and Emmy is an actress ready to play any part she needs to in order to get what she wants most. And what she wants is her own happy ending.

I'm really excited for this story. I've been writing it every day and I'm already so attached to the characters. I have faith that it will turn out well. I've also been reading a lot which is important to me because the more I read, the more I know what publishers are looking for in novels. And I'm getting there and one day I will be there. I have no doubt in that.

I've decided that the best part about making this blog is that I have ads at the bottom of my page. Now these ads relate to whatever the post is about. Now, being that my posts will all be about writing and trying to find writing jobs, so are these ads. I think they'll be more helpful then anything. Of course I'm not allowed to click on them through my page since I've put them on there to make money but that would be cheating (I hope I don't get in trouble for simply talking about it!) But copying and pasting is a talent we all possess and that's what I've been doing with them. So far I've found a pretty interesting freelance writing job site that sounds pretty cool. I'm thinking about submitting a sample writing piece and seeing where that will take me. There were a couple others that popped out at me but I haven't really had a lot of free time this weekend to check them out.

Good news is the little free time that I have had I've spent working on my story. I'm so excited about writing it that I can't wait to get home from work and just sit down and write. I feel such a connection to my characters that I feel bad when I don't write because then they don't get any further in life. Does that sound silly? It probably doesn't to any writers out there. I'm sure you all know exactly what I mean by that. And with that being said, it's time to help my cheerleader find out who she really is inside. Wish me luck.

.the starting line

So my mind has been very focused on my writing lately. I've already written two short stories (which in my case is an 80 page notebook) this year and I'm already halfway through my third one. When I'm writing, I feel alive. I connect with my characters, feel what they feel, live what they live and escape reality for a little while. And when I talk about my stories my face lights up and whoever I'm talking to can tell how passionate I am about them. Take my boyfriend for example, I ramble about my stories to him all the time. I tell him where I'm at in the story, how I feel about my characters, everything. In fact the other night I was talking to him about the story I'm writing now, about a high school cheerleader who falls for a guy in her class who could care less about her. Well one of my characters, Kelly, the cheerleader whose trying to be the reigning school queen (the main character has this title) is, well, a bitch. the biggest bitch. She is the epitome of a high school cheerleader and boy is she beginning to piss me off. But that's how I know she's good and I'm doing a good job writing her. My boyfriend finds it hilarious that I can separate myself from my characters as if I'm in the process of reading the story instead of writing it. I think this is a pretty good skill to have. It makes it all more fun, don't you think?

Anyway, back to my point. I've been writing so much lately that the thought of publishing comes up in my mind quite often. So I'm going to start checking things out, looking into different Canadian publishing companies and seeing what's out there and what I need to do to get into it - to get this done. I'm going to be a published author and I've started this blog to tell my story, to talk about my journey into this next step that I'm about to take in my life. Writing is my life, my passion, my skill. I went to Journalism school at Sheridan College and have many articles published in The Sheridan Sun, have been writing for an online music magazine for two years (www.soundproofmagazine.com) and have taken a creative writing course at the University of Toronto. I'm ready to take the next step and I want you to come with me.